Finalists Selected for Learning 2016 Barracuda Bowl

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Eight finalists selected for the Barracuda Bowl, to be featured at Elliott Masie's Learning 2016 in Orlando, Florida, taking place October 23 to 26.

Learning 2016 Keynote Speakers

We are so thrilled to be able to provide a platform for these startups to gain valuable feedback from the market and to encourage more innovation in the sector. - Elliott Masie, CEO of The MASIE Center and host of Learning 2016

Saratoga Springs, NY (PRWEB)October 11, 2016

The MASIE Center, along with USC's Rossier School of Education (a top tier school of education with a long track record of ground-breaking innovation) and StartED (a new initiative that works with entrepreneurs, investors, and universities to catalyze education innovation), has selected the 8 finalists for the Learning 2016 Barracuda Bowl. This innovative Learning Experience will be part of Elliott Masie’s Learning 2016, a premier conference for over 1600 leaders in the learning community. Through virtual technology, it will bring together 8 leading start-ups and attendees to learn, challenge, and react in a “Shark Tank” model of feedback.

Learning innovations are increasingly being harvested from startups, labs, and venture funded projects around the world. And, learning solutions targeted at K-12 or Higher Education can be adapted and extended for the huge world of corporate learning. The Barracuda Bowl is one of the first efforts to expose startup learning ventures to corporate learning executives.

Culled from the country’s university-based accelerator programs, these 8 startups are all early stage ventures with “pre-series A financing” and focus on corporate training.

The judges, who consist of academics, entrepreneurs, investors, and heads of corporate learning, picked the startups based on potential to disrupt the corporate learning space. Each company will have the opportunity to “pitch” itself to some 2,000 corporate learning leaders in Orlando on October 24 and 25, and compete for “best in class” bragging rights.

“We are so thrilled to be able to provide a platform for these startups to gain valuable feedback from the market and to encourage more innovation in the sector,” said Elliott Masie, CEO of The MASIE Center, Chair of The Learning CONSORTIUM, and host of Learning 2016.

“Given the number of people touched by corporate training and the amount of money spent in this space, it is amazing that there aren’t more startups focused on serving this sector. We currently only see about 10% of education startups focused on this space and the Barracuda Bowl was specifically designed by Elliott Masie to address the issue,” said Doug Lynch, USC faculty member and managing director of StartED.

The 8 finalists are:

CredSpark, a Brooklyn based startup that brings the power of formative assessment to corporate training.